


paper and string

by cosimamanning



Series: just one, i'm a few [2]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Cos 'n Cap'n vs. The World, F/F, Origami, Phelps the Shark Plushie, Remember Jennifer With Me And SUFFER, This Hurts I'm Not Gonna Lie, but it's bittersweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 14:23:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11382021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosimamanning/pseuds/cosimamanning
Summary: There was a time before Sarah, before Cosima was sick.Cosima likes to remember Jennifer as she was when she first met her, bright and filled with the vibrancy of life, willowy and laughing and light, always chasing the horizon.They were meant to see the ocean together.





	paper and string

**Author's Note:**

> hi yes i'm drowning in my cosima and jennifer feelings, if jennifer ever met kira she might sing her the song "terrible things" by mayday parade. special thanks to ray and norma for yelling at me as i wrote this and calling me satan.

The first thing she does when she arrives at her room, in a mansion that’s too big and too empty and doesn’t feel like a home, walls painted a uniform off-white, is smear color on any surface she can reach, and those she can’t. She isn’t an artist, by any stretch of the imagination, but she just wants the place to look like less of a scientist’s wet dream and more like a bedroom, like a teenager-friendly environment.

Even if all the teenagers present in the building are genetically identical copies of one another.

Other than that, Jennifer supposes, they’re fairly normal teenagers.

She’s one of the first to arrive, because her parents have just won this _fantastic_ cruise and they’re acting like teenagers about it, and really, Jennifer’s moms deserve the world, so she practically insists that they pack up their bags immediately, telling them that she’ll be fine off on her own in this house that is much too big to be a house.

“It has an olympic size swimming pool,” she tells them, pulling up the informational packet that Aldous Leekie sent in the mail, “I’ll be fine.”

She thinks she might miss her friends, and her house, the way her mom makes the best breakfasts and ma can’t cook to save her life, thinks that where she’s going is bound to be lonely, too big and too synthetic and too filled with scientists caught up on studying them, too far away from the little lakeside town she grew up calling hers, but she also thinks it’s safer. Because, at least there, she’ll _know_.

Privately, in a room that she’s painted a bright symphony of colors that don’t match in any way whatsoever, Jennifer admits to herself that it stings, the self-awareness, that her moms were aware of the fact that she was bigger than she was, had been actively reporting about her progress throughout her adolescence, she can’t help but wonder, sometimes, if maybe all she is to anyone is a science experiment, but then she remembers the way ma held her hand at every doctor’s appointment because she was always so afraid, and the way her mom always made her warm cocoa on the nights where she couldn’t sleep because dreams of monsters under her bed kept her awake, and she knows that their love for her, at least, is very, very real.

It’s the one thing she can count on.

She knows there’s another girl here, has seen her in her exploration of the many twisting halls, but she’s always two steps ahead of her, almost as though she’s actively avoiding her. _Rachel_ , Dr. Leekie called her, when Jennifer had asked, at his visit to her home in Michigan.

Jennifer knows that she grew up here, among these synthetic walls and empty hallways, and wonders if she’s lonely, if she’s hiding because she’s used to the loneliness or scared of what happens if she lets herself venture outside of it.

Jennifer’s only fourteen―they’re all only fourteen, all the variations of her scattered across the world, so young and yet a part of something so much bigger than all of them can begin to comprehend―but she doesn’t think that anyone deserves loneliness, her ma has always told her to pride herself for her compassion and her mom tells her that she has the biggest heart out of anyone in all of Michigan, with so much love to give, and sets off stubbornly to give a little love to Rachel Duncan, wherever she’s hiding away.

She finds her tucked away in the library, curled in on a plush seat that she sinks into, legs tucked into themselves, a cup of tea in one hand as her book rests on the arm of the chair, deeply entranced in whatever it is she’s reading. Jennifer takes a long moment to observe her, find all the ways they are different and all the ways they are similar.

Rachel gets a little crinkle between her eyebrows in her concentration the same way Jennifer does when she finds herself faced with a particularly difficult math problem, but Rachel looks more at ease than Jennifer ever has in concentration. Jennifer is a swimmer, is meant for long, broad strokes and wide movements, and always feels awkward when compact, whereas Rachel seems perfectly at home, making herself as small as possible in a chair much too big for her. Rachel’s hair is straight and blonde and professionally dyed and cut into a severe bob, and Jennifer’s falls in soft waves and is pulled into its familiar french braid, but their eyes are the same brown, Jennifer’s staring at Rachel and Rachel’s staring at the book.

“Hiya!” Jennifer greets, and there’s a moment when Rachel’s composure melts, and Jennifer can see the girl behind the masks and the walls she’s so heavily fortified, startled and disgruntled that her reading’s been interrupted. She blinks at Rachel rapidly for a few moments, unsure, before her expression morphs into one of disinterest, the masks falling back into place, but Jennifer detects the slightest hints of curiosity in the shine in her eyes.

“I’m Jennifer,” she continues, offering her hand for the girl to shake, which Rachel regards with the same enthusiasm as Jennifer expects she would a dead fish, but she supposes the holier-than-thou attitude is just a part of her, and if she’s going to love Rachel Duncan, she’s going to love _all_ of her, shitty attitude included.

“Charmed,” Rachel drawls, ignoring her hand, but Jennifer counts any response a request, and just beams back at her, and she can _see_ the palpable confusion in Rachel’s eyes, wondering why she hadn’t gone away yet and left Rachel alone to her reading.

“Whatcha readin?” Rachel just stares at her some more, frowning, and Jennifer senses that she’s pressed enough for the moment. “That’s cool, I’ll leave you to it.”

“You do that,” Rachel agrees, and Jennifer turns on her heel and walks out, whistling to herself softly, considering the interaction an overall success. Behind her, Rachel is absolutely baffled.

A month after Jennifer arrives comes Beth, and with Beth, the mansion seems a lot less lonely.

She comes in and immediately decides that the entire building needs exploring, and brings Jennifer along as her partner.

“It’s a big old mansion,” she explains, as though it’s obvious, “of course it has secret passageways.” They’re fourteen, and their lives have just been made complicated by the fact that they are _clones_ , but for the moment, they can pretend that they are long-lost twins, exploring the halls of a home that they’ve been stowed away in for safekeeping, almost straight out of _The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe_.

Rachel watches them with a clinical, judgemental gaze, and hides a smirk when they tumble down a trapdoor she discovered when she was six, falling over one another with the grace of baby deer. Jennifer scrapes both of her knees and Beth gets a nasty bruise on her forehead, but by the end of it they’re both grinning like fools, and Jennifer loves her new friend fiercely.

The others start to come slowly, in varying intervals, and Jennifer loves them all too.

Alison and Tony and Krystal and Mika, she loves them all, and they love her in return in their own way.

Cosima is the last to come to them, and Jennifer is the most excited for her arrival, outside of perhaps the children of the scientists who live on site. Jennifer wants to be a teacher someday, wants to learn everything she can about the world so she can impress knowledge upon future generations, leave an impact on the world, _mean_ something. She wants to make a difference, and really that’s not all that different from science, and Cosima is a scientist, and Jennifer has a gut instinct that the two of them will be fast friends.

Jennifer is waiting for her at the door when Cosima arrives at the mansion, practically bouncing on her feet, smile blindingly bright when she greets her.

“Hiya!” Beth told her, fondly, once, and somewhere in their year of knowing one another there have been plenty of moments where Beth has teasingly rolled her eyes and poked fun at Jennifer’s sunny personality, that she sounds like the ladies from infomercials who are over enthused about products that nobody really wants to buy, but that’s just how Jennifer is as a person. Like her room, she’s filled with color and life, and all she wants to do is _live_ , as vibrantly as and as genuinely as possible. Cosima smiles at her, though, and Jennifer considers this a success. “I’m Jennifer, and you must be Cosima.”

She leads this copy of herself with dreads and glasses and eyes filled with questions through the hallways with her parents, past the trapdoor she found with Beth when they were fourteen and past the common room where Mika plays videogames, quietly cursing under her breath in finnish, past the library where Rachel curls into herself and reads, and out to the greenhouse where Tony tends to his plumerias―among other things―rattling off history of the building she’s picked up from both her conversations with Rachel―few and far between―Dr. Leekie, and the staff.

“Is this your room?” Cosima asks, when her parents are off with Leekie, and Jennifer is lounging on a giant beanbag that isn’t really a beanbag, but is made more of a soft, foamy material that she sinks into that she ordered a few months back, and Jennifer nods.

“Yup,” she pops the ‘p’ and grins, motioning widely with her arms, “my home away from home, my little slice of paradise.” There’s a poster comparing the bone structure of the megladon to modern sharks on one of her walls that Cosima studies with a grin, and a whole shelf dedicated to books on sharks.

There’s even a shark plush on her bed, worn slightly from the years. She’d hesitated before bringing it, but her ma had rolled her eyes before placing Phelps in her bag, claiming she’d miss him too much if she left him.

“I take it you really like sharks?” Cosima’s voice is light, a teasing undertone to it, and Jennifer rolls her eyes.

“Is it that obvious?” she fires back, grinning, before nodding. “Yeah, the ocean in general, really.”

“I’m from San Francisco,” Cosima tells her, and Jennifer lights up as though Cosima’s just revealed she’s a high profile celebrity, “lived in a cute little house right by the coast, and have quite the impressive seashell collection if I do say so myself.”

“Really? What’s it like?”

“You’ve never been?” Jennifer shakes her head almost reverently.

“No, we have lakes, back in Michigan, but they’re finite, yanno? The ocean, man, it just stretches on and on. And I’m a swimmer, so it just seems like the coolest thing, to be able to swim forever.” She shakes her head, smiling. “I’d love to go, one day, to swim as far as my arms can take me, out into the horizon, swim until I can’t swim any further, and then just float.”

“Just float?” Cosima doesn’t seem nearly as enthused at the prospect of floating out on the open ocean, but Jennifer nods.

“Yeah, and just go wherever the ocean takes me, breathe in the saltwater air and just _be_.” Cosima stares at her, and Jennifer stares back, and Cosima smiles.

“I think we’re going to be friends, you and I.”

“Funny, I had the exact same feeling.”

Jennifer tells her about the mansion and the people living in it and, in return, Cosima tells her about the ocean, about the way it moves, the way it breathes life into the land and the people around it, about the beaches that are very different from the ones in Michigan and how her family had brought Cosima’s cat, Benedict, down to the water, once, and he’d absolutely _hated_ it.

Jennifer can’t imagine hating the water, not when she was raised at it’s side, not when her mothers tell her she was swimming before she was walking―an exaggeration, by all means―not when the ocean _sings_ to her whenever she hears it mentioned in passing, and she soaks in Cosima’s stories like basking seals soak in the sun.

Before either of them know it, Jennifer and Cosima are thick as thieves, arguably two of the three most talkative clones, the other being Krystal, and Rachel makes sure to be at least three rooms away from them when they’re together. They all have individualized tutors, and in the hallways, Cosima will pretend to tip her hat and call Jennifer _cap’n_ and Jennifer will laugh and roll her eyes and call Cosima _Cos_ before the two of them continue on their way.

The day they get a french scientist from the european house is the day they wonder if something is amiss, and Cosima starts to snoop, albeit horribly. Beth’s the detective amongst them, but she’s nowhere close to the science end of things, so Cosima’s the only one up for the job, which is unfortunate, considering there isn’t a sneaky bone in her body, and there’s the added flaw that she malfunctions around anyone remotely pretty and female and french within a ten foot radius of her.

“Pull it together, Niehaus,” Beth mutters under her breath, and Jennifer feels the stirrings of something akin to jealousy that she rapidly squashes as Cosima flushes and immediately goes to defend herself.

Their suspicions are solved by Leekie himself, who makes an announcement.

“One of your sister clones in Europe is sick with a genetic respiratory disease,” he tells them, and the implication falls heavy, because _genetic_ means that there’s a chance that they all have it, that they’re all sick, “so far her symptoms are mild, and Ms. Cormier is here as a liaison between our European and North American branches, so that we can transfer data. There should be no alarm here, however.”

For a while, Jennifer and the others believe him.

Life continues on as normal, in this house that is too big but Jennifer is figuring out how to make into a home, and the room she fills with more and more colors as the days pass, blues and greens and yellows, branching into purples and sometimes pastels, if she’s feeling in the mood.

And then she adds another color.

Red.

Violent and staining and brash and completely out of her control.

She and Cosima are lounging in her room, as they do on most days, after classes are over and before it’s time for dinner and the others are off doing their own things and they take time to just _be_ . Jennifer and Cosima. Cosima and Jennifer. _Cos and Cap’n_. Off in their own little world, exploring tales of high seas and planning their future adventures. And then she’s doubled over, wheezing, convulsing, and Cosima’s hand is on her back as her lungs seem to cave in on themselves, as her vision fogs, and when everything clears there are stains of red on her carpet and worried tears in Cosima’s eyes.

Jennifer’s shaking as men and women in labcoats lead her away to the medical wing, and as she goes, heads poke out of bedrooms to stare, eyes wide and unsure and _terrified_ , and she knows that their expressions are mirrored in her own.

Dr. Leekie himself comes to watch as she’s poked and prodded, frowning, the pretty french girl―Delphine―taking her vitals, because this is his experiment, after all, his investment, and he can’t be very happy about it.

“Sir?” she asks, weakly, once her lungs no longer feel like they’re on fire, and he offers her a sad sort of smile, and that’s when Jennifer _knows_ , when the weight settles heavy on her heart, and she’s glad that the doctors had stopped Cosima at the door because she doesn’t want the other girl to have to see this, to understand what she is being made to understand.

That she’s dying.

They’re all dying.

“Katja,” he pauses, seeming much older than he looks, and Jennifer assumes this is the European clone who is ill, “has shown no symptoms like this. So far, her’s have been much more minor.” He gives her a moment for the severity of his words to set in, but Jennifer’s already accepted it, already come to terms.

“I’m dying,” is all she says, stomach churning, and she doesn’t feel brave, saying the words out loud, “we’re all dying.”

“If we don’t figure out some sort of cure, then, yes, there is the potential that the respiratory disease will develop in all of you, and that you will all die.”

Jennifer thinks about Rachel and her books and Beth and her endless curiosity and Alison and her musicals and Tony and his greenhouse and Krystal and her conspiracy theories and Mika and her gentle soul, and Jennifer thinks of _Cosima_ , bright and bubbly and enthusiastic and so beautiful and filled with _life_ , and she can’t think of any of them sick, _dying_.

“I’ll do whatever you need me to do,” she decides, because it was never really much of a decision, because her ma has always told her to pride herself for her compassion and her mom tells her that she has the biggest heart out of anyone in all of Michigan, and if she can help the others live she’s going to try her damndest.

Leekie smiles at her sadly, the sort of smile you can only give a girl condemned to die.

“That’s a very honorable thing of you to do, Ms. Fitzsimmons.”

Jennifer thinks that Beth’d box her ears and call her a dipshit and Cosima would go quiet the way she always does when she’s angry if they knew what she was doing, because Jennifer knows the one thing Cosima hates more than anything is being left, but she hopes they’ll forgive her, in the end, because she’s dying and she’s desperate and all Jennifer has ever wanted to do is _live_ , and if she can’t, at least she can ensure that they will.

They finally let Cosima in once most of the doctors have cleared out, and her eyes are wide with fear but Jennifer feels eerily calm, at peace with the whole affair, and she immediately goes to trace golden ratios into Jennifer’s forearm, and Jennifer doesn’t know if the motion is meant to calm Cosima or herself.

“What’s the verdict?”

“Well,” Jennifer announces, cracking a half-smile, “I’m sick.” Cosima laughs despite herself, and suddenly the two of them are laughing, clutching at one another like lifelines, because it’s such a horrible situation and they need this, need the laughter.

Jennifer soaks in the moment, tries to memorize the way that the rough ends of Cosima’s hair feel when they brush against her skin, the weight of Cosima’s hands when they grasp onto her arms, the gasping, beautiful sound of Cosima’s laughter and the way it echoes through the air, and how joy seems to permeate the entire room, somehow overpowering the sense of despair and melancholy.

Cosima’s presence herself warms Jennifer like the rays of the sun, and Jennifer is content to bask in her glow.

She stays in the medwing overnight for observation and Cosima camps out with her, calls it an adventure, and then she’s free to go, because while her symptoms may be worse than Katja’s, they aren’t horrible yet, and for a while, Jennifer can pretend as though things are normal.

Cosima keeps her updated as the scientists begin working on experimental treatments for her. She isn’t allowed to actually work on them herself, but she’s allowed to watch, to study, and Jennifer thinks this is the most Cosima’s studied anything in her entire life.

“Treatments should start in a few weeks, for you,” Cosima reports dutifully at dinner, and all the others look hopeful, and Jennifer just smiles at them, because she knows that whatever treatment Leekie provides will only alter her timeline, but the end result remains the same.

In the end, it ends up making things worse.

The coughing fits come more frequently, blood staining surfaces _red red red_ , and Jennifer wonders, briefly, if they should just invest in a good set of paints to spare all the cleaning, because if they’re all sick surely there will be more of this to come. Some days it’s so bad that she’s bedridden, and on those days Cosima skips tutoring in favor of sitting with Jennifer and regaling her with stories of the sea, and for a while, they can pretend like everything is okay.

“Sometimes I can’t help but feel like they’re keeping secrets from us,” Jennifer tells her on one of these days, forehead slick with sweat as Cosima traces golden ratios into her forearm, “we’re sick but they don’t tell us why, or how. We’re here and we’re ‘self-aware’ but we don’t know much of anything at all.”

“I can snoop around,” Cosima offers, “try and find some things out.” Jennifer rolls her eyes at her.

“If it’s you doing the snooping, nobody will find out anything, at least send Beth.” Cosima makes an offended little noise, before the two of them enter a comfortable silence. It’s odd, considering that the two of them are usually two of the most talkative, but sometimes, in these moments, words aren’t needed.

Being together is enough.

Jennifer collapses in the library, seizing, and only Rachel is there with her, and it is Rachel who picks her up, gently, Rachel who calls for the doctors, and Rachel who sits primly at her bedside in the medwing while the tremors wear off. Cosima is still in class, and hasn’t been told.

“You’re getting worse,” she comments, and for once her expression isn’t pinched in Jennifer’s presence, in fact she actually looks almost concerned. Jennifer nods, and Rachel frowns. “You’re dying, aren’t you?”

If it were anyone else, Jennifer would lie, would crack a smile and shake her head and say, firmly but gently, _no_. But this is Rachel, Rachel who has spent her whole life knowing, but has been lied to the most of them all, and Jennifer loves all of them but she set out to love Rachel first and she can’t help but think that Rachel deserves this truth.

“Yeah,” she admits, shoulders slumping as she sinks further into the bed, sheets too white, too synthetic, suddenly feeling a lot smaller, “yeah, I’m dying.”

Rachel sucks in a breath, blinking rapidly, and if it were anyone other than Rachel Jennifer would suspect she’s holding off tears.

“Have you told any of the others?” Jennifer shakes her head. “Not even Cosima?”

“ _Especially_ not Cosima,” Jennifer responds, softly, and she knows this catches Rachel off-guard.

“Why not?”

“Because I―” that, though, she can’t say out loud, not even to Rachel, but Rachel’s eyes are knowing, understanding, and she offers Jennifer a smile free of pity.  

“You should tell her that, too.”

Rachel leaves soon after and Jennifer is left alone with her thoughts, in a room that is too big and too white, and she finds herself yearning for color and sunshine and for Cosima, and Jennifer hasn’t cried about her situation once, but now feels like a good time, because all she has ever wanted to do is _live_ , and it never seems like too much to ask of the universe, never too big a wish to wish upon shooting stars, except now living is the one thing she can never have and it _hurts_.

Maybe if Jennifer lets herself cry she will cry herself her own ocean to carry herself away from all of this, but for now she is sick and confined to a bed that is not hers in a home that is not hers, nowhere near to her mothers by the lake or her dream by the sea, and this is the reality she must deal with, because there are people depending on her. She has to _try._

It’s when her hair starts to fall out that the others can’t meet her eyes anymore and Jennifer wants to scream, because she doesn’t need anymore reminders that she’s sick, that she’s _dying_.

“The pity’s the worst part,” Jennifer tells Cosima, stretching out on the bed in the medwing that is now hers permanently, because she’s too sick to be anywhere else, looking wistfully out the window to where Beth is running circles around a wheezing Alison, “the looks people give you. They don’t mean to, but it happens. They look at you like you’re something that’s going to disappear.”

She fiddles with the cannula situated onto her nose, another reminder that she can’t do anything without assistance anymore, and Cosima just stares at her, eyes wide and sad but filled with so much love. Cosima doesn’t look at her like she’s broken. Beth looks guilty and Alison looks panicked and Tony looks vaguely uncomfortable and Mika looks scared and Krystal looks pitying and Rachel is as impassive as ever but Cosima still looks at her like she’s _bright_.

“The second worst part is how _white_ it is in here,” she scrunches up her nose and Cosima laughs, because she knows how much Jennifer hates the synthetic nature of the medwing, of the entire mansion in general, “I feel like I’m dying.”

The words roll off her tongue without a second thought and Cosima stills, fixes her with a look, and Jennifer pauses.

“Cos?” She thinks about the ocean and how much she longs to go there, how her very bones ache with the desire, how the sea _sings_ to her.

“Yeah, cap’n?”

“If…” she doesn’t want to broach this topic, not with Cosima, doesn’t want to ever have to talk about it, “if I don’t make it, take Phelps to the ocean for me, yeah?” The little plush shark has been with her since the day she was born, is with her in her bed in the medwing, and she thinks if she leaves a part of herself behind in anything it’ll have to be in him. Cosima’s expression goes stony, though, and Jennifer sighs.

“I’ll take you there myself,” she says, stubbornly, and Jennifer just nods because she doesn’t want to fight her, not now, not about this, “you and I will go together, and I’ll take you out on my dad’s boat, and we’ll collect shells, and you’ll swim as far as your arms can take you and then I’ll take you back.”

It sounds nice, Jennifer thinks, later, as she drifts off to sleep.

Almost like a dream.

The rest of Jennifer’s hair leaves and with it seems to go her strength, but she keeps pushing on, fighting because she needs to push on, because the others need her. Tony pots a few of his plumerias and puts them on her windowsill, coming up to water them on a religious schedule, chatting with her as he does, and Cosima folds delicate origami paper boats out of colorful paper that she hangs above Jennifer’s bed with string.

“What’s a captain without her fleet?” she challenges, and Jennifer smiles because Cosima is always filling her life with color.

Origami stingrays and sharks are added to the mix, and the others join in, folding all sorts of paper sea creatures, and Jennifer smiles every time someone comes to hang one. Mika makes her a jellyfish, giant and beautiful and intricate, and gently places a glass of iced tea at her bedside table with a bendy straw before retreating.

Every few days Rachel leaves a new book for her to read, showing she cares in her own way, and some days she even comes to ask Jennifer what she thinks of them, but she always leaves before the others can see her. Jennifer doesn’t want to leave her, doesn’t want her to be so lonely, but she knows that Rachel is strong, that Rachel can survive.

Cosima is with her through it all, and Jennifer loves all her clones but she loves Cosima the most, loves Cosima in a way she doesn’t love the others, and Rachel knows this, she thinks Beth knows this, from the way Beth glances at her out of the corner of her eye, sometimes she even thinks Cosima knows, from the way Cosima grasps at her desperately as if willing her into existence for a little while longer.

“We’re working on the developmental stages of a new treatment,” Cosima tells her, because they’re finally letting her help, and they’re beginning to realize that Jennifer is only getting worse and not better, and Jennifer smiles at her as she explains the science, hands dancing wildly in the air.

“If anyone can find a cure, it’s you, Cos,” she tells her, gently, reverently, and Cosima suddenly looks as though she’s going to cry, as if she’s going to collapse in on herself, and before she can say anything Jennifer shakes her head and squeezes Cosima’s hand, tightly, a rare show of strength amidst her fragility. “Make us better.”

“I will,” Cosima promises, vehemently, “I will.”

Jennifer wishes that she had more time, that she didn’t have to pass on this torch to Cosima. It’s a heavy burden to bear, the pressure to cure them all, to somehow find a way to fight time. But Jennifer can feel it in the ache in her bones, the stutter in her breath, can see it in the desperate way that Cosima looks at her, can hear it in the way the doctors whisper when they think she’s sleeping.

Her time is running out.

She thinks of her home by the lake, and her mothers, and how she found her way here. She thinks of the hallways and the trapdoors and the secret passageways she has yet to find, and of the copies she wishes to explore them with. Jennifer thinks of the ocean, vast and unknown and just _waiting_ for her to swim in it, and of all the adventures she hasn’t had the chance to live.

“Cos,” she breathes, softly, and she can hear how weak she sounds, and Cosima can, too, because she clutches at Jennifer’s hand tighter, and Jennifer thinks she feels the wet sting of Cosima’s tears on her skin, “tell me about the ocean.”

“Okay,” Cosima agrees, and she begins to speak, voice rhythmic as the gentle pounding of the waves, her skin against Jennifer’s as warm as the sun. She speaks and Jennifer can see it, in her mind, already waist-deep in ocean water.

She wants to swim out as far as her arms can take her, into the horizon, swim until she can’t swim any further and just _float_ . Go wherever the ocean takes her, breathe in the saltwater air, and just _be_ . She aches, and her arms are so tired, but still they carry her, farther and farther out into the water, away from the voice that has for so long tethered her to shore, and for the first time in a long time, Jennifer _lives_.

* * *

 

Some nights Kira coughs and neither of her mothers remember how to breathe. Sarah thinks of Cosima, doubled over a sink stained red with blood, but Cosima thinks of a girl that Sarah never met, a girl that had once been so filled with life, sinking lifeless into a bed, always dreaming of the sea.

Kira’s eyes are curious and bright and filled with life and sometimes she reminds Cosima so much of Jennifer that it aches, bittersweet, because out of all of them Jennifer had always been the most excited to live, and out of all of them she’d been one of the few deprived of the opportunity. Kira’s little hands smear bright colorful paints across blank canvases with her Uncle Felix while Cosima and Sarah watch and Cosima leans into Sarah and smiles because all the people she loves have the habit of bringing color into her life.

Cosima teaches Kira how to fold origami when her fingers are big enough, because Kira’s always been fascinated by the mobiles that Cosima and Sarah hang above her beds, butterflies and stingrays and sharks in brightly colored paper, and Sarah doesn’t ask about why Cosima learned because she doesn’t need to. Jennifer was laid to rest years ago but there are reminders of her all throughout Sarah and Cosima’s house, and sometimes Cosima thinks that she lives on through all of them, lives on through their survival.

She’d asked Cosima to cure them, once.

She had, with Sarah.

Kira finds the old stuffed shark on a stormy night, because Kira’s inherited Sarah’s fear of thunder, and they tuck her into their bed with her and she curls up with them, cuddled into their sides, clutching the worn plush close to her chest.

“Mommy?” she asks, eyes shining. “Tell me a story about the sea.”

Sarah holds Cosima’s hand and traces golden spirals into the back of her palm and for a moment Cosima swears she can feel the ghost of Jennifer’s warmth breathing through the three of them, and Cosima takes a deep breath and tells Kira about the adventures of her favorite captain, her love for sharks, always chasing the horizon.

Kira clutches at Phelps, eyes drooping with sleep despite the thunder, and Cosima’s heart swells with love.

“Will you take me?” she asks.

Cosima exchanges a glance with Sarah, who smiles at her tenderly, and remembers a promise she made, so long ago, and nods.

Kira hugs Phelps closer to her chest, and Cosima kisses her on the head, and as the thunder rumbles overhead her thoughts drift back to the sea and the girl she lost to it.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i hope you enjoyed! comments and kudos are, as always, greatly appreciated. this is my effort to single-handedly fill the jennifer fitzsimmons tag with content because i love my little seafaring child so so much.
> 
> you can always prompt me on my tumblr, [here](http://danaryas.tumblr.com/) and check out my other fics [here](archiveofourown.org/users/sam_kom_trashkru/works)
> 
> have a lovely day/night/week <3


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